How to become a Network Engineer? A step-by-step guide

All told, this hypothetical engineer took nine years to qualify to become a senior network engineer. Soft skills essential in network engineering include communication skills, problem-solving help desk engineer skills and leadership skills. Senior network engineers, in particular, also need to understand the business impact of the network and balance that against technical requirements.

By looking at a business’s products you target, you’ll know what you’re most comfortable working with. CompTIA Network+ certification will teach you about operating and troubleshooting various devices. If you want to receive one of these certifications, passing one or more exams is essential. They only give you the basics of the information technology area. In other words, they don’t give you in-depth instructions on a special organization’s devices. Becoming an engineer in this field requires both determination and time.

What Does a Network Engineer Do?

Plus, you get to work with industry standard hardware and software. MSNE graduates exit the program equipped to continue growing and learning throughout their careers. The most importantskills for modern network engineersare increasingly multidisciplinary.

Here are some success stories and tips from three practitioners who made a successful transition. Analytical thinking—to ensure your network and systems perform reliably and proactively identify new requirements as needs evolve. The internet was built on DNS, as are most of today’s enterprise networks, so you need to know how to troubleshoot it. Here’s a list of skills a network engineer needs in order to be successful. The LPI Linux Essentials and ITIL® Foundation Certificationare central to this program.

Building a Rock-Solid Foundation of Networking:

However, the Network+ certification is focused on network design, physical connections, and the process of actually deploying a network after it’s been designed. To save money and time, companies are now looking to hire people who understand the full stack of networking technologies, also known as full-stack network engineers. A network engineer’s major duties include installing and configuring different types of networking equipment and devices like routers, switches, repeaters, load balancers and more. Network engineers design and implement network configurations, troubleshoot performance issues, carry out network monitoring and configure security systems such as firewalls. They often report to a CIO, chief information security officer and other line-of-business leaders to discuss and decide upon overall business goals, policies and network status updates.

In terms of higher education levels, we found that 10.0% of network engineers have master’s degrees. Even though most network engineers have a college degree, it’s possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED. This exceptional certification from Cisco can prove your ability to install and troubleshoot any network.

Network Engineer Education Pathways

All kinds of urgent situations are addressed by them; they manage entire teams and handle procurement issues. Due to the nature of the job, control systems staff engineers are usually required to have previously accumulated 10+ years of experience in network engineering and to hold a relevant degree. Although the job titles network engineer and network administrator are sometimes used as synonyms, a network engineer usually has more executive responsibilities than a network administrator. The engineering side deals more with planning, design and technical specifications. The administration side deals mostly with day-to-day maintenance, management and troubleshooting efforts.

• For senior network engineering positions, educational requirements vary.
• You will not move up if you do not quickly start meeting people in your company and getting involved in many discussions.
• If you want to be a talented engineer in this area, it is essential to build a solid knowledge of integrating LAN, WAN, SD-branch, SD-WAN, and many more networks.